Welcome to the web’s most comprehensive site of quotations by women. 44,461 quotations are searchable by topic, by author's name, or by keyword. Many of them appear in no other collection. And new ones are added continually.

“I was seven years old when I said to my mother, 'May I close the door to my room?' She said I could do that, but she wanted to know why. ... I told her I wanted to be alone to think. When I was eleven, I asked her if I could lock the door, and she asked why. I said, 'Because now I want to write.'”

Dorothy West,

interview (1995)

“She had not learned the pitiable wrongs of living for one's child.”

Dorothy West,

&quotAn Unimportant Man,&quot The Richer, The Poorer (1995)

“[On her mother:] I don't think she ever realized how often she made the remark, 'Speech was given man to hide his thoughts.' At such times, I would say to myself, 'She will die with her secrets.'”

Dorothy West,

&quotRachel,&quot The Richer, The Poorer (1995)

“Once various forms were signed, I was separated from my free will, led down the corridors into a room which was now to be the boundary of my existence, told to surrender my clothes, handed that comic invention, the hospital gown, and sent to bed in broad daylight like a child being stripped of her privileges.”

Dorothy West,

&quotA Day Lost Is a Day Gone Forever,&quot The Richer, The Poorer (1995)

“It is a rule of mine never to ask unsolicited questions of people over twenty-one. I am only giving them the option of lying if they choose to. They would tell me the truth without my asking if they wanted me to know. To me that's fair enough.”